Joyce Oates - Sourland

Adrienne had objected: “Tracy, you can’t judge them by their outward manner. They are spiritual people just like us.”

Adrienne’s reply had been inadequate, also. Not what she’d meant to say. Not what she meant .

It wasn’t like her to say them, they in this way. As it wasn’t like Tracy to speak in such a way. And what had Adrienne meant by spiritual people just like us . This was condescending, crude.

Was this how racists talked? How racists thought?

The widow’s mistake had been, her husband had been her life. She was a tree whose roots had become entwined with the roots of an adjacent tree, a seemingly taller and stronger tree, and these roots had become entwined inextricably. To free the living tree from the dead tree would require an act of violence that would damage the living tree. It would require an act of imagination. Easier to imagine suttee . Easier to imagine swallowing handfuls of barbiturates, old painkiller medications in the medicine cabinet. I can’t do this. I can’t be expected to do this. I am not strong enough

What was mysterious to her was, before Tracy’s death she had not ever understood that really she might lose him . That really in every sense of the word he might depart from her, die .

That there would be a time, a perfectly ordinary morning like this morning in the Mercer County Courthouse, Office of the Surrogate, when the man who’d been Tracy Emmet Myer no longer existed and could not be found anywhere in the world.

The very routine of the hospital, to which she’d become almost immediately adjusted, had contributed to this delusion. How capably she’d performed the tasks required of her, bringing Tracy his mail, his work, his professional journals, his laptop — proof that nothing fundamental had changed in their shared life. And the cardiologist was optimistic, the EKGs were showing stabilization, improvement . Yet one evening Adrienne had naively approached an older nurse at a computer station in the corridor not far from her husband’s room — the woman middle-aged, kindly and intelligent — her name was Shauna O’Neill — you had to love Shauna O’Neill ! — she’d seemed to like Tracy very much — you had the feeling with Shauna O’Neill that you were a special patient, of special worth — for hadn’t Shauna always remembered to call Tracy Professor Myer which had seemed to comfort him — and flattered him — but seeing Mrs. Myer about to peer over her shoulder at the computer screen Shauna O’Neill had said sharply, “Mrs. Myer, excuse me I don’t think this is a good idea” — even as Adrienne blundered near to see on the screen beneath her husband’s name the stark terrible words congestive heart failure . In that instant Adrienne panicked. She began to choke, to cry. For hadn’t they been told that her husband was improving, that he would be discharged soon? Adrienne stumbled back to her husband’s room. Tracy had been dozing watching TV news and now he wakened. “Addie? What’s wrong, why are you so upset?” Adrienne had never cried so helplessly, like a terrified child. If one of the broken mutilated dolls in the lurid photographs could have cried, the doll would have cried in this way. This was the single great sorrow of which Adrienne Myer was capable — at the time of her husband’s death, and in the hours following, she would not cry like this. She would not have the strength or the capacity to cry like this. Raw emotion swept through her leaving her stunned, hollow. At the time she’d kissed her husband desperately, his cool smooth cheek which the Jamaican attendant had recently shaved; she’d gripped his fingers which were cool also, as if blood had ceased to flow in the veins there. She stammered, “I’m c-crying only because — I love you so much. Only because I love you so much, Tracy. No other reason.”

She’d frightened Tracy, crying like this. She’d offended him, violated hospital protocol.

She wondered if he’d forgiven her? If he could forgive her?

She had abandoned him, finally. For that, how could he forgive her?

And yet: she was thinking possibly there was a misunderstanding. A mistake. Possibly she’d been summoned to Probate Court by mistake. As the computer data regarding her husband was mistaken, so the “fact” of his death was mistaken, or premature. Her husband hadn’t died after all — maybe. Her husband hadn’t died yet .

“Ma’am! You will come with me, please now .”

The interview with Capgrass seemed to have ended with shocking abruptness. Adrienne had been trying to explain the circumstances of her husband’s hospitalization and the promises the hospital staff had made or had seemed to be making, she’d begun to speak excitably, but, she was sure, not incoherently, and out of nowhere a security guard — a dark-skinned woman with hair pressed back so tightly from her face, her head appeared to have shrunken — was tugging at her arm, to urge her from the room. Adrienne was gripping her handbag, in both arms she clutched at documents. She was distraught, disheveled. A pulse beat in her head like a giant worm, writhing. Had Capgrass pressed a secret button, to summon one of the sheriff’s deputies? Had the widow said something reckless she hadn’t meant to say? She hadn’t been threatening — had she? The dark-skinned female deputy was escorting Adrienne from the court official’s office — Adrienne was perspiring inside her expensive clothes — Oh! she’d forgotten something — she’d left something behind, with Capgrass — but what it was, she couldn’t remember. “Ma’am come with me. This way ma’am. ” The deputy spoke forcibly, ushering Adrienne into the hall. Adrienne had had more to tell Capgrass — more to explain — trying now to explain to the deputy that she had to leave the courthouse immediately — her husband was in the Summit Hill Hospital, fifteen miles away. “I have to leave now. I have to see him. His name is Tracy. He can’t be left with strangers. He’s waiting for me…he will be anxious, if I’m not there.” Adrienne was thinking how, in the past day or so, for no reason, unfairly, for he’d been sleeping and waking and sleeping and waking and not always knowing where he was, Tracy had squinted at her and said in a hurt accusing voice, “Adrienne? Where the hell have you been? I don’t see much of you these days.”

Long she would recall the hurt, and the injustice.

Don’t see much of you these days.

When he’d loved her, he’d called her Addie . The full, formal name Adrienne meant something else.

Or maybe — this was another, quite distinct possibility — he’d said, after he’d died, and Adrienne arranged to have his body delivered to a local crematorium, in a voice beyond accusation or even sadness the man who’d been her husband for thirty-two years said Well! We won’t be seeing each other for a while.

“This way, ma’am. You are not authorized to leave Probate Court just yet.”

The deputy handed Adrienne a tissue with which to wipe her inflamed eyes, blow her nose — as she led her back into the waiting room — how vast this room was, Adrienne could only now appreciate — how many were waiting here! — as far as the eye could measure, individuals who’d died, or were waiting to die, or had managed to avoid death temporarily, yes this was Probate Court and all who were here had not died but had survived.

This was their punishment, that they had survived , and that they were in Probate .

“Ma’am, slip on one of these.”

Without Adrienne’s awareness and certainly without Adrienne’s consent, the deputy had escorted her through the waiting room and into a corridor, she’d brought Adrienne into a windowless room, and shut the door firmly. What was this? Where was this? Adrienne’s tear-blinded eyes could barely make out rows of cubicles — cubicles separated from one another by plywood partitions — the air in this place was close, stale, smelling of the anguish and anxiety of strangers’ bodies.